SAGIA to Unveil Latest IT Project
Saudi Arabia’s General Investment Authority (SAGIA) has confirmed that its Governor Amr Dabbagh will present its latest IT project at an unveiling in Riyadh on Feb. 5, 2007. A host of regional and international public and private sector leaders are expected to be in attendance. The project is a SAP CRM implementation that will facilitate investment in the Kingdom.
Acer on Course for No. 3 Spot in 2007
9International IT analysts are predicting that for the first time in the company’s history, Acer Computer will become one of the world’s Top 3 PC vendors in 2007. One of the factors supporting this success is Acer’s performance in developing markets such as the Middle East.
With notebook shipments alone set to reach 12-14 million units in the coming year, an increase of 30 percent on shipped units in 2006, Acer’s global momentum is building. The company is even realizing strong, sustained growth in markets where it has previously seen the least penetration, such as the United States.
IDC figures placed Acer as the second-largest PC vendor across EMEA in Q4 2006. According to IDC senior research analyst Michael Larner, Acer’s growth was driven by its competitive desktop offerings and strong laptop sales. Acer held its position as leading laptop vendor in EMEA. Proven to be a consistent performer in the Middle East market, Acer has registered strong, ongoing growth across the GCC.
AwalNet Improves Its Infrastructure
AwalNet has improved its infrastructure in collaboration with Saudi Telecom Company (STC). The infrastructure has been reinforced with “Gigabit” technology which will enable it to efficiently handle larger amounts of data. The new bandwidth of AwalNet’s national network has been boosted to 5GB. This will help reduce bottlenecks.
This step should also improve AwalNet’s service. It will allow AwalNet’s customers from the financial sector to offer better and faster services to their clients. It will also help increase the browsing and downloading speed for the subscribers of Awal DSL & Awal EasyNet.
“The improvement of our infrastructure is the outcome of our fruitful cooperation with STC,” said Fahd Al-Hussein, GM, AwalNet. “We’ll keep updating our infrastructure with the latest technologies available in the Kingdom, in order to gain the complete satisfaction of our customers.”
One Card Receives Raqmi Award
One Card (www.onecard.com), the electronic service provider of the National Technology Group, received the Raqmi Award for Electronic Business in a ceremony held at the Intercontinental Riyadh, on Jan. 16, under the patronage of Communications and Information Technology Minister Muhammad Jameel Mulla.
One Card was presented with the Raqmi award for its innovative Internet portal, which offers a unified gateway to Arabic online services and products. More than 150 government organizations vied for the award and only 13 reached the final stage. One Card offers subscribers a unified point of access to online Arabic content through a number of agreements with content providers. The portal is designed to facilitate access to dispersed content, and offers a powerful one-stop platform for current affairs, articles, news services and other premium material.
The Raqmi awards were given to deserving recipients from five different categories: Electronic Business, E-Government, Electronic Education, Electronic Culture and Electronic Health.
IBM Holds Saudi Roadshow
IBM held a roadshow in Riyadh and Jeddah last month featuring Kevin Patterson, IBM’s Director, Worldwide Sales (System i). The IBM iSeries system is a tightly integrated system including hardware, middleware, storage and security.
In comments made on the Kingdom’s market during his visit, Patterson said: “Every indication I have had so far by talking to customers in the Kingdom, is that this is a growing market where you have growing businesses, and System i is the perfect choice for it. The beauty of System i is that it targets all small, medium businesses and large corporations. We have customers that have 10 users and others that have 10,000.”
Commenting on the future of System i which saw its first entry in Saudi Arabia in 1989, he added: “The Saudi market, the largest in the Middle East, is great for System i. In fact, one of our largest System i customers worldwide is actually here in Saudi Arabia. I still view System i as growing worldwide, but it would not surprise me if the Saudi market outpaces what we do in the world!”
Sage Connects Al-Rajhi Holding
S.A. Al-Rajhi Holding Company has implemented Sage Line 500 ERP to integrate the operations of its seven different companies, as part of its ongoing growth management strategy. Al-Rajhi is using Sage ERP to speed up back-office operations, eliminate redundancy and duplicate data, to ultimately improve quality, customer service and reduce costs. The project was implemented by local Sage enterprise partner, Al-Gosaibi Information Systems.
“With around 10,000 employees in seven subsidiaries, our operational processes are growing significantly and this created an urgent need to integrate the Holding company’s information management system,” said Dr. Zeyad Al-Hekail, general manager, information technology, Al-Rajhi Holding. “The first implementation within the group was for Al-Watania Industries. This was gradually expanded to the remaining divisions, to help organize the communication and business processes both internally, and externally as reflected in our service to customers. Our priority was ease and speed of implementation, without having to spend too much time customizing. A team of 11 consultants from Al-Rajhi’s IT team were heavily involved with Al-Gosaibi’s Sage consultants. The result was that the Sage ERP replaced several other systems, enhancing the entire business process within the group.”
Al-Rajhi today has 120 concurrent Sage ERP users and 1,200 named users. Prior to the implementation, each department functioned as a stand-alone unit. Sage ERP is allowing all departments such as finance, logistics, procurement, production, sales, marketing and engineering to function as one entity. With Sage ERP, all the group’s divisions can monitor the stock in various warehouses spread across a hundred kilometers where physical verification is difficult. The company can see exactly which items are in stock in each location and which items have been ordered.
“This helps to plan future purchases,” Dr. Al-Hekail explained. “Watania Agriculture is using Sage Project Accounting to track all costs including material and labor, related to projects such as Green Houses for crops, and animal farms. The company also uses Sage purchase requisitions to streamline purchasing.”
Xerox Appoints Master Distributor
Xerox has announced the details of its new partnership with DICOM, a leading distributor and capture solutions provider in the Middle East and Africa region, supplying scanners from leading manufacturers. Building on its regional partner network, Xerox has appointed DICOM as their Master Distributor for Xerox’s complete scanner range. DICOM will be responsible for supplying and supporting Xerox scanners to Xerox’s current channel network as well as DICOM’s own channel across the Middle East and Levant. DICOM will also provide the channel and businesses with added value in the shape of consultancy and support services.
“Appointing DICOM is a win-win situation for us as they mirror Xerox’s strategy when it comes to providing state-of-the-art document management solutions, imaging products and consultancy services to organizations,” said Dan Smith, Office Products Manager, Xerox Middle East and Africa. “Xerox will be partnering with DICOM on projects providing customers with an opportunity to work with two of the market leaders in imaging and capture, bringing best of breed solutions to their businesses.”
DICOM will be looking after Xerox’s DocuMate series of workgroup scanners that combine the power of scanning, PDF file creation and document management, while offering the highest level of image quality and optical character recognition (OCR) accuracy.
Campaign for Digital Awareness in Gulf
ICDL GCC Foundation, the governing body and certification authority of the International Computer Driving License (ICDL) program in the Gulf region, has kicked off a regionwide initiative aimed at raising awareness of the need for digital illiteracy.
Today, with basic literacy having reached admirable levels in the GCC and with the increasing use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), the concept of literacy has taken on a new dimension, and has practically been replaced by digital literacy as the new economic growth-driver. Literacy has always been known to have an influence on socio-economic development. A few decades back, there were strong literacy movements throughout the region, driven by a realization that a literate society held the key to sustained social and economic progress. Now digital literacy is a similar driver.
“Technology has undoubtedly become essential to enhancing the provision of health care, education and e-services. We have reached a time when the ability to use computers is as important as the ability to read and write. Everything has become reliant on information technology, and digital awareness is directly linked to a nation’s socio-economic growth,” said Jamil Ezzo, DG, ICDL GCC Foundation.
Digital literacy refers to the ability of an individual to use modern computing and e-services in order to be functional in modern society, to participate confidently in the affairs of society and to prosper in that society. Digital literacy competencies are the enabling skills for the citizen to be functional and confident using the common applications to achieve current everyday work, personal or community tasks and duties.
